past, another epoch from which so many | he gave it to universal man! From this great events have taken a turn; events seminal principle, and from a handful, a which, while important to us, are equally hundred saints, blessed of God and ever important to the country from whence honored of men, landed on the shores of we came. The settlement of Plymouth Plymouth and elsewhere along the coast, - concurring, I always wish to be un- united, as I have said already more than derstood, with that of Virginia - was the once, in the process of time, with the setsettlement of New England by colonies tlement at Jamestown, has sprung this of Old England. Now, Gentlemen, take great people of which we are a portion. these two ideas and run out the thoughts suggested by both. What has been, and what is to be, Old England? What has been, what is, and what may be, in the providence of God, New England, with her neighbors and associates? I would not dwell, Gentlemen, with any particular emphasis upon the sentiment, which I nevertheless entertain, with respect to the great diversity in the races of men. I do not know how far in that respect I might not encroach on those mysteries of Providence which, while I adore, I may not comprehend; but it does seem to me to be very remarkable, that we may go back to the time when New England, or those who founded it, were subtracted from Old England; and both Old England and New England went on, nevertheless, in their mighty career of progress and power. Let me begin with New England for a moment. What has resulted, embracing, as I say, the nearly contemporaneous settlement of Virginia, what has resulted from the planting upon this continent of two or three slender colonies from the mother country? Gentlemen, the great epitaph commemorative of the character and the worth, the discoveries and glory, of Columbus, was, that he had given a new world to the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Gentlemen, this is a great mistake. It does not come up at all to the great merits of Columbus. He gave the territory of the southern hemisphere to the crowns of Castile and Aragon; but as a place for the plantation of colonies, as a place for the habitation of men, as a place to which laws and religion, and manners and science, were to be transferred, as a place in which the creatures of God should multiply and fill the earth, under friendly skies and with religious hearts, he gave it to the whole world, I do not reckon myself among quite the oldest of the land, and yet it so happens that very recently I recurred to an exulting speech or oration of my own, in which I spoke of my country as consisting of nine millions of people. I could hardly persuade myself that within the short time which had elapsed sincethat epoch our population had doubled; and that at the present moment there does exist most unquestionably as great a probability of its continued progress, in the same ratio, as has ever existed in any previous time. I do not know whose imagination is fertile enough, I do not know whose conjectures, I may almost say, are wild enough to tell what may be the progress of wealth and population in the United States in half a century to come. All we know is, here is a people of from seventeen to twenty millions, intelligent, educated, freehold-ers, freemen, republicans, possessed of all the means of modern improvement, modern science, arts, literature, with the world before them! There is nothing to check them till they touch the shores of the Pacific, and then, they are so much accustomed to water, that that's a facility, and no obstruction! So much, Gentlemen, for this branch of the English race; but what has happened, meanwhile, to England herself since the period of the departure of the Puritans from the coast of Lincolnshire, from the English Boston? Gentlemen,, in speaking of the progress of English power, of English dominion and authority, from that period to the present, I shall be understood, of course, as neither entering into any defence or any accusation of the policy which has conducted her to her present state. As to the jus tice of her wars, the necessity of her conquests, the propriety of those acts by she has taken possession of so → a portion of the globe, it is not the De present occasion to inNo, no tenev, neque refello. But cal dem, or intend to speak of en sets of the most extraordinary zauer, arequalled in the history of means of her naval prowess, and the extent of her commerce, until in our day we have seen that within the Mediterranean, on the western coast and at the southern extremity of Africa, in Arabia, in hither India and farther India, she has a population ten times as great as that of the British Isles two centuries ago. And recently, as we have witnessed, I will not say with how much truth and justice, policy or impolicy, 1 do not speak at all to the morality of the action, I only speak to the fact, she has found admission into China, and has carried the Christian religion and the Protestant faith to the doors of three hundred millions of people. a ca the globe, and the conses of which may and must reach Lua thousand generations. The sas & England in the reign of e First. England herself had IFA NOVU somewhat settled and esd the Protestant faith, and in de quel enjoyment of property, by the vous energetic, long, and prosperous of Elizabeth. Her successor was a the Sixth of Scotland, now It has been said that whosoever would Je James the First of England; see the Eastern world before it turns there was a union of the crowns, but into a Western world must make his sou of the kingdoms, -a very important visit soon, because steamboats and omIreland was held by a nibuses, commerce, and all the arts of y power, and one cannot but see Europe, are extending themselves from ghs at that day, whatever may be true Egypt to Suez, from Suez to the Indian ✰ wirue in more recent periods of her seas, and from the Indian seas all over the y, Ireland was held by England by explored regions of the still farther East. awo great potencies, the power of theNow, Gentlemen, I do not know what word and the power of confiscation. In practical views or what practical results or respects, England was nothing like may take place from this great expanKugland which we now behold. Her sion of the power of the two branches of vign possessions were quite inconsid- Old England. It is not for me to say. ble. She had some hold on the West I only can see, that on this continent all ada Islands; she had Acadia, or Nova is to be Anglo-American from Plymouth Setia, which King James granted, by Rock to the Pacific seas, from the north wholesale, for the endowment of the pole to California. That is certain; and nights whom he created by hundreds. in the Eastern world, I only see that you And what has been her progress? Did can hardly place a finger on a map of she then possess Gibraltar, the key to the the world and be an inch from an EngMediterranean? Did she possess a port lish settlement. the Mediterranean? Was Malta hers? Were the Ionian Islands hers? Was the southern extremity of Africa, was the Cape of Good Hope, hers? Were ph whole of her vast possessions in Aulia hern? Was her great Australian spire hers? While that branch of her spulation which followed the western stat, and under its guidance committed self to the duty of settling, fertilizing, and peopling an unknown wilderness in the West, were pursuing their destinies, that causes, providential doubtless, wore leading English power eastward and southward, in consequence and by Gentlemen, if there be any thing in the supremacy of races, the experiment now in progress will develop it. If there be any truth in the idea, that these who issued from the great Caucasian fountain, and spread over Europe, are to react on India and on Asia, and to act on the whole Western world, it may not be for us, nor our children, nor our grandchildren, to see it, but it will be for our descendants of some generation to see the extent of that progress and dominion of the favored races. For myself, I believe there is no limit fit to be assigned to it by the human mind, because I find at work everywhere, on both sides of the Atlantic, under various forms and degrees of restriction on the one hand, and under various degrees of motive and stimulus on the other hand, in these branches of a common race, the great principle of the freedom of human thought, and the respectability of individual character. I find everywhere an elevation of the character of man as man, an elevation of the individual as a component part of society. I find everywhere a rebuke of the idea, that the many are made for the few, or that government is any thing but an agency for mankind. And I care not beneath what zone, frozen, temperate, or torrid; I care not of what complexion, white or brown; I care not under what circumstances of climate or cultivation, if I can find a race of men on an inhabitable spot of earth whose general sentiment it is, and whose general feeling it is, that government is made for man, man, as a religious, moral, and social being, and not man for government, there I know that I shall find prosperity and happiness. "The mercantile interest of the United States, always and everywhere friendly to a united and free government." Mr. Webster sat down amid loud and repeated applause; and immediately after, at the request of the President, rose and said: Gentlemen, I have the permission of the President to call your attention to the circumstance that a distinguished foreigner is at the table to-night, Mr. Aldham; a gentleman, I am happy to say, of my own hard-working profession, and a member of the English Parliament from the great city of Leeds. A traveller in the United States, in the most unostentatious manner, he has done us the honor, at the request of the Society, to be present to-night. I rise, Gentlemen, to propose his health. He is of that Old England of which I have been speaking; of that Old England with whom we had some fifty years ago rather a serious family quarrel,-terminated in a manner, I believe, not particularly disadvantageous to either of us. He will find in this, his first visit to our country, many things to remind him of his own home, and the pursuits in which he is engaged in that home. If he will go into our courts of law, he will find those who practise there referring to the same books of authority, acknowledging the same principles, discussing the same subjects which he left under discussion in Westminster Hall. If he go into our public assemblies, he will find the same rules of procedure - possibly not always quite as regularly observed as he left behind him in that house of Parliament of which he is a member. At any rate, he will find us a branch of that great family to which he himself belongs, and I doubt not that, in his sojourn among us, in the acquaintances he may form, the notions he may naturally imbibe, he will go home to his own country somewhat better satisfied with what he has seen and learned on this side of the Atlantic, and somewhat more convinced of the great importance to both countries of preserving the peace that at present subsists between them. I propose to you, Gentlemen, the health of Mr. Aldham. Mr. Aldham rose and said: -"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England Society, I little expected to be called on to take a part in the proceedings of this evening; but I am very happy in being afforded an opportunity of expressing my grateful acknowledgments for the very cordial hospitality which you have extended to me, and the very agreeable intellectual treat with which I have been favored this evening It was with no little astonishment that I listened to the terms in which I was introduced to you by a gentleman whom I so much honor (Mr. Webster). The kind and friendly terms in which he referred to me were, indeed, quite unmerited by their humbie stject, and nothing, indeed, could have been more inappropriate. It is impossible for any stranger to witness such a scene as this without the guest interest. It is the celebration of an event which areaty stands recorded as one of the most interesting and momentous occurrences which ever took place in the annals of our race. And an Engishman especially cannot bus experience the deepest emotion as he reparis such a scene. Every thing which he sees, every emblem employed in this cele bration, many of the topics introduced, remind him most impressively of that com muży of ancestry which exists between his own countrymen and that great race which peoples mis continent, and viio, a enterprise, ingen sity, and commerci, se vy-in all the elements indeed of s great and prosperous nation — Hy not exceeded, perhaps not equalled, by any other nation on the face of the globe. Ge temen, I again thank you for the hear you have done me, and conciade by expressing the hope that the event may confine to be celebrated in the manner which is importance and interest meris.” Mr. Aldham sat down smid graat 12 plause. THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE YOUNG. A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE SUPREME COURT AT WASHINGTON, ON THE 20TH OF FEBRUARY, 1844, IN THE GIRARD WILL CASE. THE heirs at law of the late Stephen Girard, of Philadelphia, instituted a suit in October, 1836, in the Circuit Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sitting as a court of equity, to try the question of the validity of his will. In April, 1841, the cause came on for hearing in the Circuit Court, and was decided in favor of the will. The case was carried by appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, at Washington, where it was argued by General Jones and Mr. Webster for the complainants and appellants, and by Messrs. Binney and Sergeant for the validity of the will. "At a meeting of a number of citizens, Delonging to different religious denominations, of Washington and its vicinity, convened to consider the expediency of procuring the publication of so much of Mr. Webster's argument before the Supreme Court of the United States, lants, v. The Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens in the case of François F. Vidal et al., Appelof Philadelphia, and Stephen Girard's Execu tors, as relates to that part of Mr. Girard's will which excludes ministers of religion from any station or duty in the college directed by the testator to be founded, and denies to them the right of visiting said college; the object of the meeting having been stated by Professor Sewall in a few appropriate remarks, the Hon. Henry L. Ellsworth was elected chairman, and the Rev. Isaac S. Tinsley secretary. "Whereupon it was, on motion, unanimously resolved, "1st. That, in the opinion of this meeting, the powerful and eloquent argument of Mr. Webster, on the before-mentioned clause of Mr. Girard's will, demonstrates the vital importance of Christianity to the success of our free institutions, and its necessity as the basis of all useful moral education; and that the general diffusion of that argument among the people of the United States is a matter of deep public interest. 2d. That a committee of eight persons, of the several Christian denominations represented in this meeting, be appointed to wait on Mr. Webster, and, in the name and on behalf of this meeting, to request him to prepare for the press the portion referred to of his argument in the Girard case; and, should he consent to do so, to cause it to be speedily published and extensively disseminated. "The following gentlemen were appointed the committee under the second resolution Philip R. Fendall, Esq., Rev. Horace Stringfellow, Rev. Joshua N. Danforth, Rev. R. Randolph Gurley, Professor William Ruggles, Rev. President J. S. Bacon, Doctor Thomas Sewall, Rev. William B. Edwards. "The meeting then adjourned. "H. L. ELLSWORTH, Chairman "ISAAC S. TINSLEY, Secretary.” |